by Ginny Greninger
The Santa Fe Animal Shelter and the NM House Rabbit Society teamed up for a house rabbit adoption event in Santa Fe on Saturday, 11/9. This was National Adoption Weekend and the bunnies, puppies and kittens were out in force to find their forever homes at PetSmart.
Our loyal volunteers Palin, Bonnie, Julie, Ashley, Maria and Ginny staffed the event. Elizabeth brought new adopter bags she prepared. We brought four shelter bunnies: Lorax, Mimi, Kalinda and Corporal. We staged the event in the front of the store as requested by PetSmart, and found this was a much better location than in the back of the store where we had been located in prior events. We were near the check out line and this generated quite a crowd viewing and asking about house rabbits.
We shared much education outreach and lots of bunny head pets. Two folks fell in love with Mimi and Kalinda and we believe they may come back to the shelter to finalize adoptions in the near future. One young woman came to the event in search of a cat or dog, but when she saw Mimi she switched paths and became very interested in adopting a house rabbit and spent quite a bit of time with her. She has subsequently decided to adopt Mimi and will be bringing her home this week!
We only had one nail trim request, done so well by Ashley, since we had an event just over a month ago. All in all we deem the event a success because we were able to educate so many Santa Feans about house rabbits.